


Some People Want (Everything)

by Anonymous



Series: Stuff that I write as Anonymous [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alpha Billy Hargrove, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Billy is hopelessly in love with Steve, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Omega Steve Harrington, Protective Billy Hargrove, and generally hopeless, steve loves him anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2020-11-27 00:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20939030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: So. Steve is never going to recognise that Billy is his mate, which means that Billy is the one who will have to convince him of the fact.Which means that Billy is fucked. Andnotin the good way.





	1. Chapter 1

As an alpha, Billy was always going to be able to recognise his mate; he’s sure he can single out Harrington in a crowd of hundres of thousands, picking up on his sweet singular scent among the sweat and grime of a faceless people.

(And hadn’t _that_ been a fun surprise? Harrington the North Star to Billy’s shipwreck in the middle of fucking Nowhere, Indiana. _Home_, where no place, no _one_, has ever been home before?)

An alpha can always tell, always, and from the moment he turns eighteen and falls ass backwards into his designation, Billy has known.

Steve, though, is an omega, and everyone knows that omegas can’t tell for shit. They have no sense of smell, not for the important things. So. Steve is never going to recognise that Billy is his mate, which means that Billy is the one who will have to convince him of the fact.

Which means that Billy is fucked. And _not_ in the good way.

**

Billy drives his fist into Harrington’s face and relishes every sick, loud smack of his knuckles hitting flesh and bone.

Billy is a fucking idiot.

**

So he’s a little messed up. Billy will be the first one to admit that he’s not exactly in touch with his feelings and whatnot. He’s got anger issues, commitment issues, daddy issues, and a whole host of other _insert-word-here_ issues.

Okay, so maybe he’s more than a little messed up (Billy is fucked up, is the thing). By life, by his asshole of a dad and coward of a mother (dead now. Dead for years and years). By a sister who so desperately wants to be his friend but Billy just doesn’t know how. Doesn’t know how to let Max into his life in any kind of way that is positive. Has no frame of reference for someone who appears to give two shits about him, so Billy pushes her away, again and again until she gets it. Until she stops trying and _Billy_ is the asshole, yeah? He makes sure their monster of a dad never lays a hand on her, on Susan, but that’s all he can manage, all he has to offer her between the constant brimming of a low-simmering fury and hate and resentment and Billy can’t fucking wait till he’s eighteen and can finally take off. Can get a job and a place of his own and punch his dad back if he so much as even thinks to raise a hand against him.

(And there’s been less of that these last couple of years, once Billy shot up, once he started packing on muscle, once it became apparent that he was never going to end up anything other than _alpha_.)

Billy is done. He’s out of there. And not even the thought of leaving Max to their father’s mercy is enough to keep him in Hawkins. Not even the thought of Harrington, pretty as he is, _good_ as he is, can make Billy stay.

_Except_.

Except Steve isn’t just pretty. Steve isn’t just good and kind and sweet and, and, _and_.

Steve is _his_.

His mate, his _One_, and Billy might be fucked up and beyond repair, but he’s a possessive son of a bitch, and the second fucking Tommy H. starts sniffing around Steve like the dirty creep he is, Billy puts his plans on hold. Just for a little while.

Just for a second.

**

Steve has already settled into his omega designation the first time he and Billy meet, which doesn’t matter, but is ridiculously pretty, which does. Someone like Billy, someone who is not yet eighteen, has no stake in whether someone is a man or a woman, alpha or omega. A teen on the cusp of adulthood is little more than a bundle of hormones and sex drive.

Billy just wants. Everyone. All the time.

But Steve more than most, maybe. He’s undeniably pretty, the king of Hawkins, long-haired and soft-skinned with red-bitten lips, and Billy bets it would feel so, so good to get between his thighs, the way it always feels good to get between someone’s thighs.

But Steve doesn’t so much as glance at Billy’s direction unless Billy very deliberately gets all up in his face, too caught up in the Wheeler girl and the questioning glances of the Byers kid, and Billy is many things (fucked up, dark, twisted things), but he has never, will never, force anyone to anything.

Not like that.

So he holds onto the daydreams of pretty Steve with the pretty eyes and the long legs and doesn’t mind that he wakes up hard after a night of sweet, sweet dreams, but lets the actual idea of it go.

Steve Harrington is not for him. Fine.

Billy has other cherries to pluck.

(And Billy plucks a whole field, it feels like.)

**

One of his first life lessons is to not stand out. Go about your business, keep your head down, and take it on the chin when you inevitably fail.

Neil is a shit person and a shit father, but an excellent agitator and Billy always did have a temper.

Probably the one thing they share between them.

So he talks back when it gets too much, when he can’t swallow the words down, and his mother looks away as Neil rains down fist after fist.

“You piece of shit,” Neil says, spitting on the ground next to him, saliva mingling with the small puddle of blood. “You’re not worth the air I breathe.”

Billy’s mom doesn’t disagree. Neither does Billy.

**

Billy graduates the year he turns eighteen, just a few days before his birthday. He skipped a grade back in middle school, when his teachers started noticing the long division he could do in his head, the advanced vocabulary and the answers that came just a little too quick. Billy reckons he could have probably skipped a few more grades, easy, but.

One of his first life lessons is to not stand out.

Billy is more than smart. He is _intelligent_. Intelligent enough to play dumb (smart enough to get a full ride to Harvard, Yale, wherever. Smart enough not to let Neil know).

Billy has _plans_. He’s all set to go, to leave Nowhere, Indiana behind.

And then he turns eighteen.

**

Billy wakes up an alpha. This, in itself, is no surprise. He’s known the chances of him being anything but were so small there wasn’t really a chance of it at all.

The surprise, the shock, is the deep-rooted knowledge within him, somewhere far deep in the very essence of his soul, that Steve Harrington at this particular moment in time is walking up the driveway of an address Billy only knows because he once beat Harrington’s face in at that exact address.

Billy lies in bed, feeling every step Steve takes reverberating in his mind, a homing beacon that screams out _here I am, I’m yours, come find me, I’m _**_yours_**.

In a drawer by the desk in the corner of the room, there is a college acceptance letter and a plane ticket to Massachusetts, purchased by money Billy has pilfered from Neil over a longer period of time.

He’s going. He’s got it all set up. There is no way he’s staying, not for Max and not for anything.

Billy closes his eyes and breathes in deep, savouring the traces of something earthy and sweet.

Twenty minutes and forty-one seconds away, Steve exits the house and walks the steps back to his car. Billy hears every step as if Steve was walking right next to him. Tracks him as he gets in his car, as he starts heading towards downtown Hawkins, towards the new mall.

It’s Saturday.

Billy opens his eyes and very carefully doesn’t look at his desk. “Fuck.”


	2. Chapter 2

Being mates does not equate to being _soul_mates. Not the way Billy’s read about in books or seen in movies. There is no guarantee of love, no automatic sense of affection. It’s not a fated love written in the stars. It’s not destiny despite those who would claim otherwise.

Billy thinks of the man who sired him and the woman who birthed him, and snorts at the idea of destiny ever bringing the two of them together. More like circumstance and chance.

A random event in a random world.

No. Mates are not fated.

Rather, it is choice. Potential. A sort of _what can be_ between two people, or even three or four. An alpha meets an omega, and maybe that alpha recognises them as mates, but the omega never will. An omega never falls in love with an alpha just because they are mates.

That’s a lie alphas perpetuate for convenience sake. To make it easier for _them_, to not have to make the effort of proving themselves worthy. Capable. _Loving_.

Sensory deprived. That’s how the world describes an omega’s inability to recognise their mate; a biological imperative to avoid forever binding two or more people together, people who don’t make sense as a whole.

(To protect victims from their abusers.)

That’s where the choice is supposed to come in. That’s why an alpha should have to work for an omega’s affection, to prove that they’d be the right fit:

_I’ll protect you, protect our little ones. I’ll love you, love our little ones. I’ll be your family, I’ll **give** you a family._

Billy would have to. Prove himself, that is, if that is the path he chooses. If that is the choice he makes.

He wakes up on June 21, an alpha where he wasn’t one before. He wakes up with the deep-rooted knowledge that Steve Harrington is his mate. He does not wake up in love.

But the potential is there. The groundwork of feelings in place already. Billy is attracted to him, he always was, and is more than a little intrigued, and if he lets himself, Billy could fall in love with Steve so very, very easily.

(Bright eyes and a shy smile, a pretty face underneath all that hair, and Billy is halfway in love already the first time their eyes meet. The attraction, the pull between them is an instant thing, sudden and overwhelming and then Billy opens his mouth and the bright eyes dim and the smile disappears. Weeks later, Billy punches that pretty face again and again and—)

Billy is not in love, but he knows what could be, if he allows it. If he stays. If Steve deems him worthy.

Because despite Neil’s best efforts and a world refusing to teach him how to care, Billy falls in love often.

“A little in love with being in love,” his mother would say, on the days she was sober, on the days she remembered she had a son, which was rare enough it’s probably why the memory of it stands out so brightly in his mind.

Billy sees her, in the hammock out back of their small suburban house, the smell of freshly-cut grass and smoke in the air. She was an old soul in a young body, face bruised and her right wrist in a cast; her eyes were vacant, but they always were, and she was smiling, a sad, twisted thing pulling at the corners of her lips.

“But one day, dear heart, you’ll fall in love for real. You’ll meet your mate, your One and only, and you’ll go to your grave, carrying that love.”

Billy thinks of his mother and remembers the woman who allowed a monster to tear him down again and again, a woman who stayed and accepted the apologies and the flowers and the empty promises of this being “the last time, I _swear_, Lily, you have to believe me.”

He remembers her and thinks of the woman who never once stood up for him, who never once found it in herself to protect her son from his abusive father. Who always looked past the bruises and the broken bones.

He remembers the woman who carried her love to the grave.

(Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, when there is no one to lie to but himself, he remembers the bruises on his mother’s face and the cast on her right wrist that had been on her left one the year before, and on her leg, her—

Sometimes, Billy remembers that Lily Hargrove never stood up for him. But then she never stood up for herself either.)

**

Lily Hargrove believed herself in love with her husband, believed she _had _to be, seeing as they were mates.

Billy knows better. Billy knows it was a choice (everything she did was a choice she made. Everything she _didn’t _do, another).

Billy doesn’t have to love Steve, but he thinks he may want to. He thinks that would be kind of nice, actually. _Right_, he thinks.

That’s Billy’s choice.

**

“Shit, but I want to do dirty, _dirty _things to Harrington in that getup. I mean, _fuck_.”

“I know, baby, just look at that itty, bitty waist and those legs. Getting rid of those two losers has done wonders for his figure.”

Billy grits his teeth and reminds himself that unprovoked assault is an excellent way to get his ass thrown in jail.

(Much as it would be deserved in his humble opinion.)

Why, he wonders, did he decide this would be a good idea?

He doesn’t hang out much with Tommy and Carol anymore, not since the incident at the Buyers’ house the night he lost his goddamned mind. He doesn’t really hang out with anyone these days, more content to spend the night with one or two of his cherries, ripe for the picking—flushed, and oh so tasty.

But they’re useful, Tommy and Carol, as cruel and small-minded as they are (and if Neil has taught him anything, it’s how to use people to his own needs). Carol is the one who calls him at home, all sweet and cloying when Susan answers the phone, and Billy has begun breathing in sync with Steve’s steps somewhere in downtown Hawkins, so when Carol says, “Hi Billy! Tommy and I are heading downtown to check out the new mall. Wanna come?” it’s as easy as anything to say _yeah, sure, go ahead without me, I’ll meet you there_.

(As easy as Steve walking one foot in front of the other. _Thump, thump_, there goes the beat of Billy’s heart.)

And, yeah, that’s why.

“I could just eat him whole. What do you say, babe? Should we grab a taste?” Tommy says with a smirk, leering in Steve’s direction, and Carol titters, loud and high pitched.

Loud enough for Steve to notice, to glance over at them from where he’s manning the cash register, that stupid sailor’s hat crooked on his head, hair flopping in his eyes as he meets Billy’s gaze head on for the briefest of seconds.

He turns pale, is the thing, paler than his usual porcelain skin, and Billy knows he didn’t imagine the slight flinch once Steve registers who exactly has secured a table in the far corner of the little ice cream parlour.

Fear. Billy is too intimately familiar with the feeling not to recognise it when he sees it in others. Steve is afraid of him, much as he’s doing a good job to try and hide it.

And not without reason.

Billy tears his eyes away from his mate, glaring down at the table as he puts his hands on his lap and curls his fingers into tight fists. He tries not to remember the sound of a chorus of kids screaming for him to stop, of bones creaking underneath the force of his punch.

“Can I help you?” a voice cuts in sharply, interrupting Tommy and Carol mid-conversation. “Or are you just here to waste our time? If you’re not buying I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. Company policy.”

Billy looks up to see a tall girl pointing at the Scoops Ahoy sign above the shop entrance.He frowns, smelling the alpha scent on her. A glance at the register reveals that Steve has disappeared.

(Billy can feel him, pacing at the back of the shop.)

“Sure,” Carol says, eyes cold and voice sugary sweet. “We were hoping for Steve, though. He’s a friend of ours, and I don’t really feel comfortable being served by an alpha I don’t know. I’m sure you understand.”

The girl’s brows shoot up at something so blatantly crass and discriminatory, but she doesn’t call them out on the bullshit it is. Instead, she hums pleasantly. “I see,” she says. “Unfortunately, Steve wasn’t feeling well and took an early day. You should have come said hi sooner. Seeing as you’re his friends and all.” She stares them down, all angel like, and Billy finds he has to swallow down a sudden laugh, enjoying the ugly look that steals across Carol’s face, the smugness that drops from Tommy’s.

“I didn’t see Steve leave,” Tommy insists, trying to catch the girl in a lie.

She shrugs delicately. “We have an exit in the back.”

There’s a small queue forming by the register without Steve there, a crowd of little girls impatiently glaring at their table, obviously waiting for the girl to be done with them and get back to her job. Without them, Billy knows, without the watchful eyes and loose tongues, Carol would have made a scene, perfectly content to tear into the girl, to twist her own omega nature to her advantage, playing the victim to a strange alpha.

Tommy would have helped, gloried in being the hero he so falsely considers himself to be.

Delusions of grandeur is prevalent in both of them.

And Carol might be a bitch, but she’s a smart one, and she knows this particular audience won’t play to her favour.

“Fine,” she snaps out now. “We’ll just have to come back later. Once Steve is feeling better.” She pushes out of her chair, grabbing at Tommy, fingers curling around his arm roughly as she starts pulling him back into the food court. “Billy, you coming?”

Billy leans back in his seat, lifting one arm to rest along the back of the neighbouring chair, casual as you please. He shifts his eyes from Carol to Tommy and back again, missing nothing, not the faint flicker of derision in Carol’s eyes or the blink and you’ll miss it grimace Tommy can’t quite hide as Carol’s nails dig deeper.

“You know what? I think I’ll stay. You know how I can’t resist a sweet treat.”

She does. It’s why he’s never gone after her despite her clear singling that he’d be more than welcome.

Carol’s jaw locks, furious at the subtle insult, but she manages to paste on a smile. “That’s fine!” she chirps brightly. “I’m sure we’ll catch up later.” She doesn’t say goodbye as she drags Tommy away. She doesn’t acknowledge the other girl at all.

“Wow,” the girl says, staring after them. “She’s somehow managed to become more of a bitch since graduation. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Billy snorts, because ain’t that the truth. He looks back at the girl and finds her already staring at him. Robin, her name tag reads. He doesn’t recognise the name despite her hint that she went to school with them.

“I wasn’t kidding before, you know. Either buy some ice cream or get out.”

Billy vaguely wonders if they ever crossed paths in the school halls. If they shared any classes. They probably did.

“I better line up, then,” he says simply, and finally abandons his chair to join the queue by the register.

Robin narrows her eyes, but allows it. She opens her mouth to say something, but seems to decide against it, snapping her mouth shut as she makes her way back to her customers, sparing only a second to glare at Billy warningly. Not once does she glance behind her to the door leading into the backroom, but Billy doesn’t need her to look to know that Steve is still there, no longer pacing, but there.

(_Thump, thump_ goes his heart.)

“Well?” Robin demands when the queue is gone and it’s just Billy there. “Did you decide on a flavour yet?”

Billy wonders if she’s like Tommy and Carol, if she wants Steve as much as they do—like _Billy _does. If that’s why she’s protecting him so fiercely.

Or maybe she’s just being a good friend.

(Billy wouldn’t know. He’s never had one of those.)

He smirks at her, deliberately doesn’t look at the ice cream selection, and says, “Cherry, please. Two servings.”

“Two servings?”

Billy hums to confirm. “One for me,” he says after Robin hands him the first serving. “And for Steve,” he finishes, and pushes the second serving she tries to give him back across the counter top. “Tell him I said I hope he feels better.”

Robin stares at the ice cream for a second. Then, she lifts her gaze to Billy. She seems colder, suddenly. “Steve already left. I told you.”

(_Thump, thump_, Steve takes one step, then another. Turns, does it over again.)

Billy lifts a brow. “Did he?” he asks, mild.

“He did,” Robin says firmly.

Billy hums again. “Well. Tell him anyway. Once you see him. And tell him…”

“What?”

“Tell him to stay away from Tommy and Carol if he can help it.” If _you _can help it, he doesn’t say, but Robin is smart, gets it without Billy having to spell it out for her. Good.

If nothing else, Billy will make sure that he puts a wrench in Tommy and Carol’s plans, that they’ll never get to form the triad they’ve decided Steve will complete. Steve is not for them.

(Too good, too _kind_.)

Might not be for Billy either. But.

_But. _Choices.

Billy glances over Robin’s shoulder, to the closed shutters of the little window in the wall behind her, eyes moving left then right, tracing the path of Steve’s pacing (_thump, thump_). Billy smirks. He has time, he decides. Summer is still long. He doesn’t have to decide anything now. Doesn’t have to make a choice, _the _choice now.

There is still an acceptance letter and a plane ticket in his desk drawer if this doesn’t pan out.

He has time.

He offers Robin one last smirk, and then turns on his heel, plans already forming in his mind.

“He doesn’t like cherry, you know,” Robin calls out after him, and Billy stops in his track, but doesn’t turn.

He grins. “Well then,” he says. “I’ll just have to come back till I find out which flavours he does like.”

There’s silence behind him, and Billy’s grin widens as he leaves the shop. Chocolate, he thinks, already planning on coming back the next day. Something sweet.

Like Steve.

(_Thump, thump._)


	3. Chapter 3

Billy often dreams about little blond, blue-eyed children.

For the longest time he thought he’d make a shit dad, because Neil was and his father before him, and for all that Billy sometimes wished he’d just put a gun to Neil’s head and pull the god-damn trigger, they are more alike than Billy will ever admit aloud.

And Billy lacks a lot of things, but self-awareness is not one of them, so he decides early on that he’ll probably never have children. Best to end the cycle with him, because if Billy ever raised a hand to his own child, he’d have to kill himself, and that would probably fuck up his kid too even if it does mean years of no abuse.

Max coming along only solidifies his decision. Every hurtful word he throws at her, all the derisive sneers just nails in the coffin. Billy doesn’t even mean to be such an ass most of the time, but he says things to cut and draw blood, words that chip away at her piece by piece, and he can’t seem to make himself stop. So he pushes her away, keeps her at arms-length in a fucked up way to protect her. Better for her to hate him than to hate that she loves him.

(Like Lily, who could never make herself walk away no matter how many times Neil tore her down.)

The older he gets, though, he can’t stop thinking about it. And then the dreams start to happen, little blond, blue-eyed kids running around, looking like Billy. Like Billy imagines he would have looked like if he hadn’t grown up with an abusive dad and an alcoholic mother. If he’d been someone loved and precious.

He wouldn’t mind that, Billy thinks. Having kids like that. Tiny people he’d adore and who’d worship him back because he’d be an awesome fucking dad, and suddenly Billy is thinking maybe having kids one day wouldn’t be so terrible after all. He basically just needs to do everything Neil didn’t do, and to _not _do everything he had done.

So Billy dreams of little kids that look like him, and when they move to Hawkins, he starts picking up on a scent from them as well, his little dream kids. His future that could be.

Every time Billy wakes from one of those dreams, he thinks to himself:

_I could spend eternity with that scent._

He thinks he could spend eternity with the source of that scent, too, and therein lies Billy’s problem, because he never actually used to dream who would bear his little blond, blue-eyed kids.

But now he does, and he _wants_.

Everything.

**

When Billy is fourteen, he manages to knock up a female omega.

It’s probably the most terrified he’s been ever. He accuses her of trying to trap him into something, even as he was the one who insisted they could forego the condom. He screams at her to get rid of it, hurls so much verbal abuse at her he scares even himself with his vitriol.

When he finally calms down enough to think beyond the white haze in his brain, he notices her gasping sobs—air stuttering uselessly in her chest because she’s trying to hold it back. She’s scared. Scared for herself, and maybe for the baby too. Scared of Billy, definitely.

“Fuck,” Billy mutters. “Shit, don’t cry, okay. I’ll go with you. To the clinic,” he says when she looks at him, confused. “You won’t have to do it alone, I’ll go with you. But you have to do it. You have to get rid of it. We can’t have a baby. We can’t. _I _can’t_._”

She doesn’t disagree, but she doesn’t speak up either.

In the end, they never make it to the abortion clinic; she miscarriages three days later.

The girl had been eighteen at the time, only a couple of months into her omega designation.

Sometimes, Billy wonders what happened to her. If she’s okay. If she’s happy. She’d be twenty-two now, old enough to have a whole heap of kids if she wanted to.

Billy wonders if she thinks about it, wherever she is, about having babies. He wonders if she thinks about the baby they lost, the one Billy would have made her get rid of regardless.

Billy does.

Billy thinks about it a lot, actually.

**

“Oh joy. You’re back.”

Billy smirks at the sarcastic words and settles deeper into his seat at the corner booth. He knows his deliberate relaxed posture rubs Robin the wrong way, which is all the more reason for Billy to play up his casual attitude. “So I am. Where’s Steve? I saw him when I first came in. Did he feel sick again?”

Billy watches, amused, as a muscle twitches at Robin’s jaw, and has to admire the way she doesn’t acknowledge his question at all.

“Did you want mint chocolate chip today as well, or are you still going for every flavour in here?”

“It’s just the one flavour, I’m after,” Billy says, smirk widening as Robin’s nostrils flare at that; she’s so very good at reading his subtext. “But I think I’ll try the buttered pecan today. Two cups, two scoops. You can bring the second cup to Steve if he’s still here.”

Robin sighs and rubs at her chin, losing just a bit of her hostility. “Fine. Be back in a sec,” she says, and flashes him such a fake smile that Billy can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him.

He kind of regrets that he never got a chance to know her at school. He thinks they’d probably get a long pretty great, actually, if it wasn’t for Billy chasing Steve and Robin deliberately standing in the way of that.

Billy likes her anyway. She’s kind of awesome.

It’s Tuesday before noon, and not a single other customer at the shop, so it only takes minutes before Robin is back at his booth.

(Billy politely pretends he hadn’t seen her consult with Steve through the wooden shutters as she put his order together.)

“Here.” She slams down the cup of ice cream on his table, which, after nearly two weeks of repeating the same ritual, is really just par for the course. “Steve said thanks, but no, so I threw the second cup in the trash.”

“Oh, so he _is_ here.”

“Oh, shut up, Hargrove. As if you didn’t know,” she spits at him before stalking back towards the cash register and to the backroom where Steve is pacing up a storm.

Somehow, in the two weeks they’ve all been doing this, Steve and Robin have come to trust that Billy will alert them to any potential customers or petty thieves going for the register when they hole themselves in the backroom to inevitably talk about Billy.

He’s wearing them down. Day by day. Scoop by scoop.

Billy is even having fun. Verbal sparring with Robin, making sure Tommy H. and Carol stay the fuck away from the shop, and sneaking glances at Steve whenever he can—feeling him breathe from twenty feet away.

_Thump, thump, thump._

The beat of Billy’s heart, forever in sync with Steve breathing, Steve walking, Steve _being._

_Steve, Steve, Steve._

“Thanks for the free ice cream.”

Billy looks up, his face going carefully blank at the sight of his little sister (_step_ sister, he used to emphasise, because that meant she was better off, that the bond she shared with Neil and Billy was in name only—none of their fucked up DNA to ruin her too, because she is too good, too innocent, and it’s the only way he knows how to protect her. His sister. _His_.)

“What are you doing here, Max?” He knows his voice has gone harsh and dark, but he can’t help it. He never can.

Max shrugs, deliberately ignoring his tone. She’s so very, very brave. “Dustin says he’s been gorging on the free ice cream you keep providing. I wanted in on it. Seems only fair. S’not like you ever buy _me_ any ice cream. Or anything at all.”

Billy wonders if she realises that she’s jutting her bottom lip into a pout. Probably not. She’d be mortified at her own behaviour. Too cool for that stuff, she’ll insist. Billy just thinks it makes her look cute, and hates that he does.

It makes him so bone-weary sometimes, to push her away when she keeps coming back. When she keeps giving him chance after chance to do better. _Be _better.

She’s the most hopeful person he knows underneath all the sarcasm and bluster. He’s never met anyone with such a deep-rooted belief that every day has the potential to be better than the last. He doesn’t get how she can still cling on to that when she’s spent nearly all of her life with Neil. With Billy.

“Max.”

She loses the pout at his sharp voice, but stubbornly doesn’t leave, shoulders boxing up around her ears as she takes a seat, avoiding looking him in the eye as she digs into her cup of ice cream.

Buttered pecan, Billy notices.

“I thought Robin threw that one in the trash,” he says, and it’s as much of an apology as she’ll get from him, this opening. Because she’s not leaving, that much is clear, and Billy is too weary to make her.

Max grins at him. “She only says that to make you think you wasted your money. Usually Steve gives them to Dustin, or any one of us when we come to visit.”

_Any one of us_ means the group of fourteen-year-olds that tend to follow Steve around like ducklings. Billy seems them all the time, dropping by the shop to badger Steve with this and that, begging for his attention and free samples of ice cream and pouting like little kids when Steve refuses them—the ice cream, not the attention. If anything, Steve positively dotes on them.

At the beginning, when Billy first started hanging out at the shop, the kids had been all bewildered, eyes bugging to see him enjoying his ice cream in what Billy now considers his booth. He hadn’t seen most of them since the incident at the Buyers’ house. The black kid especially had been wary of him, the one Max thinks he doesn’t know is her boyfriend, but they all tend to scurry into the backroom with Steve, leaving an exasperated Robin to man the cash register while they get up to whatever mischief is happening that day.

They never bother Billy. Not even Max the few times she’s caught him there.

He doesn’t know what makes today different.

“You said usually,” Billy says. “Usually Steve gives the ice cream away. But not always?” He knows he’s giving himself away, but the kids have been watching him drop by the shop for two weeks now. It’s no secret that he’s here for Steve.

And yet, Max looks surprised anyway. She finally meets his eyes, hers wide as her gaze roves over the planes of his face. As if he’s some stranger she’s never seen before. “No,” she admits, quiet. “Not always.”

There is something deeply primal about that. About the thought of his intended omega eating food that Billy has provided for him, something in his base nature that predates modern civilization, and Billy cannot help the small, satisfied smile that steals across his lips at the thought.

“Good. That’s good,” he says, and if possible, Max’s eyes grow even bigger.

“You actually really like him. You’re _courting _him.”

“Of course, I am. What the hell did you think this was? A prank? I don’t have that kind of patience.”

“_Yes_!” Max insists. “Or maybe not a prank or whatever, but like, revenge or something. For—well, you know.”

There is a shit-ton of stuff to unpack in that one sentence, not least of all because Billy never got the whole story of whatever the hell had been going on last year. He knows there are things they kept from him, that Max keeps from him still. Things that has to do with Steve and the kids and—

And.

The thing is, Billy fucked up back then. Can still hear the sound of skin breaking open under the force of his fist if he closes his eyes, and there is nothing Billy can ever do to make up for it. But he is willing to try, if they let him. If _Steve _lets him. And so he doesn’t ask the questions he probably should, and he keeps his temper in check as much as possible. And he protects them, Max and Steve, as best as he can—from Neil, from Tommy and Carol.

From things they don’t even realise can hurt them so, so bad.

“Well, it’s not,” Billy says after a long pause. “No prank, no revenge, just—”

“Love?” Max suggests sarcastically, as if the very idea of it is utterly laughable, and Billy doesn’t even try to defend what he’s doing.

So he says nothing.

But Max must read some kind of answer in his silence, or maybe she knows him better than Billy gives them both credit for, because she hums thoughtfully, looks at him for a long, long moment, and then says, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she repeats, nodding her head. “Just answer me this one thing. If Steve actually came out here, talked to you himself and asked you to stop, to back off, would you?”

Billy doesn’t even have to think about it. “If Steve wants me gone, then I’m gone.” He is no stalker, no predator after helpless game. If Steve wants him gone, he only needs to say the words. As much of a brute as Billy knows he can be, he’s not one to force himself on someone. Has never needed to, has never wanted to.

Max stares at him.

“What?”

She shakes her head. Keeps whatever she was thinking to herself. “Nothing,” she says. She finishes the last of her ice cream before putting the cup down on the table, neon pink spoon rattling in the empty cup. “Thanks for the ice cream.”

“Sure,” Billy says, and watches as she stands from her seat. She doesn’t leave, though. Just stands there and looks at him, as if she still can’t quite believe it’s really him.

“What?” he asks again, getting annoyed now.

“Moose Tracks,” she says nonsensically.

Billy blinks at her, wondering for a second if she’s lost her damn mind.

Max grins. “For tomorrow,” she explains. “You should try Moose Tracks.” She nods at the ice cream display by the cash register. “He likes the fudge.”

“Moose Tracks,” Billy repeats, incredulous, and Max gives him a surreptitious two thumbs up, looking like a complete dork before she disappears back into the backroom.

_Moose Tracks, huh?_

Well. Billy guesses it won’t hurt to try.

(And fuck it all, if tomorrow doesn’t look just a little bit better than today.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone is doing okay in these weird times.
> 
> Note: Moose Tracks didn't actually come out until the summer of '88.

**Author's Note:**

> We'll see where this goes, I guess?


End file.
